 Dr. Schultz, thanks so much for that generous introduction, and let me say something that I'm not much of a substitute for Jeff Bingaman. He was supposed to be here today. We had votes in the Senate this morning on some very important matters, a highway bill, reauthorizing flood insurance, and of course student loan rates, all of which are of keen importance to people in California, the latter ones, particularly here at Stanford University. So because there were votes in the Senate, he had to stay for that and couldn't get on the plane with me this morning to come out. But I think I speak for him, I know that I speak for him, in saying that he's certainly of the view, and I think everyone here would also be of the view, that when we look to standards of excellence in public service that George Schultz long ago set the standard, and his contributions to the nation and to the world have been tremendous during his time in Washington, and they continue today here in California and here at Stanford. So I thank you again for that very kind and generous introduction. I'm very pleased to be here today to substitute for Senator Bingaman in closing up the Silicon Valley Energy Summit. I got here around lunchtime, and I was very pleased to be able to hear the afternoon presentations. The program obviously has touched on a wide variety of important energy policy topics with implications for academia, industry, and government. Our focus in Washington really is on how to try to bring together these various strands of energy policy into some sort of coherent framework, and how to do that at a national level. And in trying to define what an appropriate national energy policy would be, and the concrete actions that would help implement such a policy. Senator Bingaman's had a fairly consistent view over the 15 or so years that I've worked for him, and I think it starts with the following three questions. What should be our national energy goals? What are the factors that determine whether and how quickly we achieve these goals? And what policies should we adopt, and what actions should we take to improve our prospects for achieving those sorts of goals? So had he been here, he would take each of those questions in sequence, dealing first with the question of natural national energy goals, and so will I. I think that we would summarize what we think ought to be the overarching goals of national energy policy with perhaps some six points, and here they are in the next slide. The first goal is that we should certainly promote robust domestic production of affordable energy from a diversity of sources. The tendency of course in energy, whether it's markets or policies over the years, is for us to focus on whatever happens to be sort of the flavor of the month, whatever happens to be sort of the topical source of energy supply at the moment, and then to act as if that one source of supply, whether it's renewables or coal or oil and gas or natural gas or nuclear or whatever, is the only option that counts. And the reality of our energy system is really quite different from that. Our consumption and our energy infrastructure and our energy system in this country is vast. In fact, most people in the general population just don't really have even an intuitive grasp of how complicated, complex, and huge sort of our energy infrastructure in this country is. And so because it's so vast, you literally need it all. We need all possible sources of energy supply to meet our energy needs. And furthermore, because of this kind of flavor of the month scenario, the flavor of the month problem that we have, it's crucial for us to step back as a matter of policy and worry about maintaining diversity, because at any given time we're focused on one particular kind of energy, but we need to be focused on all the others, because we have no, we don't have perfect knowledge of the future, and we're capable of being surprised continually. We are surprised continually by technological advances, by geopolitical developments that change rather dramatically our views of the kind of energy that we need. So since that's the case, we really can't be in the business at any one time of just building one kind of energy infrastructure for the future. In energy, diversity of supply is security of supply. So that's an important part of an energy policy is to focus on this robust, affordable, and diverse source of supply. Second little goal is that we should promote efficiency in the transmission, distribution, and use of energy. It's very significant that today's forum is being hosted by the Precourt Energy Efficiency Center, focused on that goal of improved energy efficiency. It's not enough just to have a supply-oriented policy. We have to use the energy that we create wisely. And that means that we need to have effective infrastructures for moving it around, from getting it to the places where the supply is to where the demand is. So we don't build redundant sources or infrastructures of energy, and also means that we have to focus on the most effective ways of end use of energy, and of course everybody in the room certainly is aware of that. Third goal is we need to worry about markets. There was a time in the 1970s when the government set the price of energy and the government allocated energy supplies by Fiat. Congress actually wound up hating having to pass bills and resolutions on that topic from a month-to-month basis. And frankly, that approach to energy did not work well for the country. Since the 70s, though, we've had sort of a rather stable policy consensus in this country that we would use market forces, both to set energy prices and to allocate energy supplies. And I think that, you know, relying on market forces certainly has been an improvement over direct government control, but it comes at the cost of one important requirement. If we're going to use market forces, then we need to make sure that market forces operate in a manner that's free from manipulation and that's transparent to all the key actors in the energy sector, both on the supply side and on the consumer side. Otherwise, energy producers and consumers can't make rational or cost-effective decisions. Our fourth goal is to maintain some kind of balance between achieving energy policy objectives and achieving environmental objectives. Most energy policy issues, as I think everyone in the room knows, are sort of intertwined with environmental issues. On some of them, you feel like you're looking at two sides of the same coin. And to have policies in either area that will stand the test of time. You need to sort of have the big picture in mind when you make policies on the energy side or energy-related policies on the environmental side. We have to look at our energy policies and make sure that our path forward does not have needless and adverse environmental impacts. Similarly, we have to make sure that when we look at our environmental policies, but that we've sort of sorted out what their energy implications are so that we have a sustainable path forward with minimal adverse impacts as well. So broadly speaking, going forward to have that balance between energy and environment is one of the things that we say when we say we need to make a transition in the future to a clean energy economy, because we need to maximize both energy and environmental benefits. The fifth goal is to maintain our world leadership and energy research development and innovation. If you sort of look at the first four items on either side, you will find over time when you are making policy or executing policy, at some point you will come to some impasse or you will come to some insoluble conundrum in moving forward with that and you really can't figure out how to make progress. So what usually rides to the rescue is a new technology or new scientific insight. And by creating new options for achieving energy goals, research and development innovation play really a crucial part in any comprehensive energy policy. So any country that wants to have a world class energy policy has to have a world class innovation policy as well. And the final goal is that we need to focus on creating jobs here in the United States and realizing other economic benefits that result from pursuing goals one through five. As we design a comprehensive national energy policy, we ought to look for ways in which that policy can build and contribute to the general economic strength of the country. Having a dominant position in innovation means that we must have universities and research institutions that train scientists and engineers who can contribute not only to the specific energy issues, but can spill over their contributions into other important economic spheres in the economy. And it's important to have a good energy and comprehensive energy policy to have a good economy because generally, if you have a reasonable energy policy and you're developing robust and effective energy markets, what you will discover very quickly is that people will want to manufacture where the market is. And so if you have leading edge markets for energy technologies here in the United States, that will naturally pool along to those places, the manufacturing capabilities. And as manufacturing comes, that tends to pool along with the research and development capabilities. So building strong markets for advanced energy technologies in the United States means that we have a greater chance of capturing the high value manufacturing jobs and research development jobs that are associated with those technologies. So these six goals define what Senator Bingman has long believed, and I think what many people in Congress have believed, ought to mean when people say that they have a comprehensive energy policy. It's often the case in Washington when people feel that their particular area of energy is being slighted or not being talked about enough, they sort of define, well, comprehensive energy policy means you're talking more about my favorite topic. And that's sort of natural in a political system. But it's not a comprehensive policy if you're just focused on one resource or one favorite strategy. You need to look across the entire architecture that's sort of defined by these six goals. And of course, as the presidential year unfolds, and we have energy debates, I think Senator Bingman is clearly of the view that we've got sort of up on the chart here, kind of a handy checklist for people to use to evaluate what they're hearing from all sides, in terms of the kind of energy policy that we need going forward, and judging whether it's really comprehensive and sustainable over the long term or not. Now that we sort of defined the first question, which is what should be our national energy goals, I'd like to move more to the second point that Senator Bingman would have wanted to make today, and that is what are the factors that determine whether and how quickly we achieve these goals. And I think that there are probably four obvious types of factors here. There is the speed of scientific and technological advancement. There are market forces and evolution. There are policies that other nations undertake, and the policies that we ourselves adopt, and actions that we ourselves take. And let me start first with the first of these factors, which is the speed of scientific and technological advancement. This is a factor that we can influence to some degree by the investments we choose to make, both in fundamental and applied research, and the speed with which we encourage, as a society, these new innovations to reach the marketplace through various types of supporting policies at different levels of government. At the same time, we are not in complete control of this factor. Obviously, new scientific and technological advances don't always occur in the timeframe that we would like. For example, 1987, we had a startling scientific advance in the form of high temperature superconductivity, and there was a tremendous excitement at the time and expectation that we would shortly see superconducting wires dominate our electric transmission system on an interstate basis. Well, it's been 25 years and progress on that front, although meaningful, has been slower than what people initially thought. And on the other hand, we're in the middle of a technological revolution in the natural gas industry right now, and in the oil industry in terms of producing oil and gas from tight geologic formations. That was a scientific breakthrough and a technological breakthrough that, frankly, the big oil didn't see coming. Nobody saw that coming. In fact, there was this crazy guy named George Mitchell in Texas who had the world's most compliant board of directors that allowed him to keep experimenting with coupling horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing until he sort of had the recipe for success. And so that was something where a lot of very experts, including you could find reports of the Department of Energy that are only three or four years old, talking about the future of natural gas that mentioned shell gas, not one bit. So, you know, there are breakthroughs that come when we least expect them and they can have fairly dramatic effects. Market forces and how markets evolve, which is sort of the second point here, also play a role in how we achieve our energy goals. Market forces are the main determinant of a lot of decisions that are made by utilities, businesses and consumers in deciding the kind of energy that they want and how they plan to use it. And let me give you two examples of how some of those forces are at work today. I was talking about price of natural gas and here's a little chart that shows how the price of natural gas has evolved in the last two years and how it's fallen to essentially historically low levels and has the prospect of remaining at those low levels for quite some period of time. So when you have a market evolution like that, it obviously affects the ability of other government policies to move the system around as a whole and government policies that try to counter that market reality will sort of have this element of swimming a little bit against the tide. Here's another important market development that's going to shape our energy future. Probably the most significant market development other way is sort of illustrated on the left-hand side of the slide. This shows that what we are looking at for the foreseeable future is flat or declining demand for energy in the developed countries while we are seeing greatly increased energy demand in the non-OECD countries, in the developing countries. That's the reality of energy markets that is going to face the world. Is this fact that we have this sort of declining market in our, you know, particularly for oil and gas in the OECD, but demand that's growing by leaps and bounds overseas. The policies and actions of other nations are a third major factor in our ability to achieve national energy goals. Of course we're familiar over the decades with the effect of transnational organizations like OPEC and the effect that they have generally exerted from time to time, more successfully than not in various time periods on oil prices. For much of the last couple decades the benchmark price of oil that OPEC has set and the amount of production that it has deployed at any one given time has been an important factor in driving demand, deriving prices, and also deriving technology of choices in the transportation sector. Here's a slide that shows another example about how policies in other countries can affect our national energy goals. It shows the sharp decline in price of photovoltaics due to Chinese policies to greatly expand the manufacture of key materials components in solar cells. And this is a development that has posed sort of a mixed picture for our energy policies. On the one hand people who are doing project development that involve acquiring large amount and deploying large amounts of solar panels, like the fact that they are now available at lower prices than they had anticipated. And so on the one hand that encourages deployment of solar in large-scale projects in the United States. On the other hand there are there are certainly negative consequences to undermining the financial incentive to manufacture key solar equipment in the United States. And as China and as well as other key developing countries such as Russia, India, and Brazil continue to expand their consumption of energy and the development of their own energy resources, their national policies are going to have major implications on world prices of energy and thus on our policies as well. Finally the fourth and perhaps most important factor in achieving our energy goals is what we decide to do ourselves. And this encompasses actions such as what we do to address the sort of the six overarching goals I sort of outlined at the beginning. What do we do to speed the deployment of advanced energy technologies? What do we do to create the workforce of trained personnel that we need at all levels of the energy industries in this country? How stable and how predictable are the market policies and the market signals that we send in energy? And of course how do we cooperate with other with other nations in meeting and tackling international energy issues and challenges? The question of what we do here in the United States to achieve the goals of a comprehensive energy policies. In fact the final major question that Senator Bingman wanted to address today and in keeping with the title of the talk which is sort of a legislative perspective we'll address this primarily from the vantage point that we have in the United States Senate. Most of what Congress does can be simplified perhaps maybe oversimplified into boiling it down to sort of three basic powers. One is the power to spend, the second is the power to tax, and the third is the power to regulate. And in Senator Bingman's view and I think the view of many in Washington as it regards energy policy in each of these three areas Congress has had a long-standing bipartisan consensus about how to proceed but in the last couple years to a very substantial extent that bipartisan consensus has unraveled to a significant degree. So today in Congress we basically have great difficulty in coming to agreement about what we should do with any of these three powers in terms of our energy policy. In the case of spending for example there once was a consensus in favor of having a substantial range of support mechanisms for research development and innovation and deployment of energy. That included direct fiscal support through the appropriation spills for research development. It included using the government's procurement power to make it sort of a leading intelligent customer for new energy technologies to encourage them along. And it included things like giving grants to state and local governments to spur their energy efforts and the diffusion of new energy technologies into communities. The consensus also included sort of indirect forms of federal support such as loan guarantees for advanced energy technologies. And this consensus was built on something that was referred to earlier this afternoon in a couple times. The realization that the energy industry on its own is not really doing a very good job of funding research and development and innovation. And of the the in the energy sector as was pointed out were somewhere between 0.3 and 0.4 percent of sales is being invested in R&D. And of course you know in computers and electronics it's closer to 9 percent. In pharmaceuticals it's 19 percent. And as was pointed out earlier this afternoon you know the energy industry is sort of dead last of major U.S. industries in terms of its commitment to new research and development innovation. And further when you take a new energy technology as everyone this room knows to scale you will you sort of find sort of risks and expenses that can't be borne by the particular company alone. You know these funding gaps are sort of collectively known as the Valley's The Death. You have one when you first try to get a new technology into initial commercialization and then even after you've built the first one or two of something at some pilot level and you've gotten over that value of death then you have a second value of death when you try to really take it to total scale and have it really go into the marketplace. And there was once a consensus that the federal government actually had a role in trying to address those gaps as well. But as I mentioned earlier these sorts of consensus is to increase both direct and indirect forms of federal spending on research development and innovation and deployment sort of coming apart the seams. You'll sort of see it at one level in the stagnation of support for actual R&D funding. And we have proposals basically in play in Congress now that just basically take sort of across the board's constant federal spending sort of regardless of what the area is or how important it might be. And those are certainly a real change in the atmosphere that we've had from only two or three years ago when we were passing bills like the America Compete's Act that had major increases in spending planned for highly high science and technology intensive areas like energy. And of course you know you see it in the political fallout from the Dewey Loan Guarantee Program from Selindra. You know that political fallout certainly has sent a potent signal if you haven't noticed it yet that spending future spending through indirect mechanisms like loan guarantees is sort of out of favor in Congress these days. And in case you missed the signal here in California you only have to look at the most recent version of the Energy and Water Appropriations Bill passed by the House which had an amendment adopted on the floor of the House that specifically prohibited loan guarantees in renewable energy systems, electric power transmission systems, and leading edge biofuel projects. And so in terms of people sometimes complaining about picking winners and losers in Washington, the House certainly decided to pick a couple losers and to single those out as places where there'd be an absolute prohibition on new loan guarantees. And you can see it also in an amendment that we adopted in the Senate. I'm not just picking on the House. In the this year's defense bill and committee there's a majority of our Senate Armed Services Committee voted to limit the ability of the Department of Defense to purchase biofuels to serve its energy needs. Even though biofuels are one part of a strategy to enhance fuel diversity from military missions and provide some security benefits, these are all sort of disturbing signs that the consensus on promoting energy policy through federal spending really has unraveled. The second of the three congressional powers of course is the power to tax or the power to provide tax incentives or tax expenditures. This power this power has historically been at least as important if maybe not more important than the spending power of Congress in terms of energy. But here as well Congress is finding itself increasingly unable to agree on what tax provisions should be enacted or which one should be even maintained to meet our national energy goals. Over the years about two-thirds of federal spending for energy in fact has come through the tax code. Most often in the form of various incentives some to promote research and development, some to promote commercialization, some to promote actual energy production. We had a recent consensus in the Energy Policy Act of 2005 to focus tax expenditures and tax incentives on clean low-carbon energy and that was done by Republican Congress and signed by Republican President. You know the 2005 Act was the leading proponent in the Senate was Senator Pete Domenici who at that time was a chairman of the Energy Committee. It provided both tax incentives for renewable energy and also an expanded suite for the first time of tax incentives for energy efficiency and that was both at the residential and at the utility scale. And along with state policies and a renewable fuel standard those incentives drove a significant amount of the recent increase in the deployment of wind, solar, biofuels and other clean energy sources. However in recent years what we've seen is a growing concern about the deficit, a general opposition to federal action and that has prompted some in Congress to oppose keeping these tax incentives in place as they expire and need to be renewed. So at the end of last year Congress failed to extend about 10 expiring provisions that were directed to clean energy and attempts in this year to extend them retroactively which which Congress has done in the past also have failed. As we know as you all know the primary tax credit supporting wind power expires at the end of this year in the sense that only projects placed in service by the end of this year can qualify. Of course no project even in wind that you started today would be placed in service at the end of this year. So for all intents and purposes as a mechanism for encouraging more wind energy that tax credit has actually in de facto has expired and there are other important tax credits to support advanced biofuels that also will expire at the end of this year. If the general expectation is that if Congress acts on these tax credits at all we won't do that until after the election in the so-called lame duck session. It is some believe that they are probably a bargaining chip in some larger debate about what to do about a whole suite of tax issues including the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts that are also due to expire at the end of this year and but unfortunately you know leaving all this to lame duck session of uncertain length with perhaps perhaps a backlog of two years of legislative topics in other areas that need to be addressed means a very high level of uncertainty concerning the fate of these incentives for clean energy and that just means that businesses and investors are just going to hold off on developing technologies deploying projects and expanding markets and even assuming that these tax provisions get extended for some extra period of time whether it's a year or 18 months or even two or three years we do face sort of a broader question in terms of our usage of the power to tax as a way of promoting an energy agenda. You because what that gives you and sort of the way that we structure tax bills in recent years is a system basically of on and off incentives and that's helpful to some degree to new technologies but it's not the kind of sustained signal that you really need to have really do unleash innovation and deployment of advanced energy technologies because the marketplace needs predictable long-term signals and you don't get that from the way that we legislate on tax bills so if we want energy innovation to flourish we have to look somewhere else and of course the third that brings us to the third of the congressional powers which is the power to regulate. Regulation does have the advantage of setting a long-term program for an industry you know regulations don't expire every 18 months the way tax credits do and some of our energy related regulation is in the form of direct energy standards such as standards mandating increased efficiency for commercial equipment and consumer goods another form of regulation is through requirements the requirements that we placed on energy production practices so to the extent that we have safety standards for coal mines or fracking standards for the production of natural gas you know that's another form of regulation and then final a final sort of form of energy regulation a little more indirect form deals with bringing into the pricing system of the country the environmental externalities associated with energy and that's where you know pricing greenhouse gas emissions or carbon dioxide sort of comes into the picture again as with spending and with taxation we are seeing pushback across the board on energy regulation even in areas that were the subject of pretty good bipartisan agreement as few as you know four or five years ago for example I think one of the most effective long-term provisions of the 2007 comprehensive bill we did which passed the senate with like 74 votes and was overwhelmingly supported in the house was a series of consensus standards that dealt with improving efficiency for appliances and lighting the standards in the lighting area were the subject of a long dialogue with the lighting industry they they were they're still supported by a broad coalition of the companies that manufacture lighting and light fixtures they're certainly supported by a broad coal the coalition that includes energy efficiency advocates and consumer advocates based on the long-term signal that we set in the 2007 act the lighting industry made some very substantial investments over a five-year period and reworking all their manufacturing lines to meet them and today you can see the result you can go to any Lowe's or any Home Depot and you can see a wide variety of lighting choices you can find improved incandescent bulbs so the classic incandescent bulb is just 28 percent more efficient you can see complex fluorescence you can see led lighting all those are guaranteed to save the consumer's money there's sort of no question about that yet those efficiency standards actually are sort of the tip of the spear for sort of political attacks by some in our system and and again this year the house of representatives passed a proposal basically cutting off funding to prevent the Department of Energy from enforcing those standards on industry despite the fact that no major lighting manufacturer in the country asked them to do that no major lighting manufacturer in this country opposes those regulations they're all in compliance so again the sort of the general point is that the general consensus that in Congress that we've had on energy goals that we're trying to achieve as a nation just has seemed to have fallen apart and whether we're talking about spending or taxing or regulating it's unlikely that we're going to do a lot more make a lot more progress in this Congress as a whole this year the general agreements on how to proceed that were reflected in these bipartisan bills again in 2005 Senator Domenici a Republican you know led led to charge in the in the in the Senate it was strongly supported it was signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2007 the Senate had flipped but Senator Bingham was in the lead but also with a strong partnership with Senator Domenici and once again President George W. Bush signed the law but those agreements you know seem to have expired in some way so you know one hope obviously is that once we get past this sort of particularly brutal election cycle that we're in perhaps we'll be changed circumstances in Congress and once again perhaps we can find areas of agreement as as Dr. Schultz pointed out you know the energy committee in the Senate has been one place in the Senate where we've had pretty good dialogue across party lines there certainly are differences that people have on energy policy some of them come from you know sort of philosophical views some of them come from sort of the views of their regional interests but we've managed to find a way to report out even in this Congress a number of of bills the 19 bills relating to various slices of of an energy policy all which kind of are subsumed somewhere under the six general goals that we have for energy policy but it's also true that sort of at a more macro level this election year has really been more about looking backwards looking over our shoulders you know trying to find who's the blame for what as opposed to looking forward and trying to have some sort of positive agenda and that's not just true in energy that's true of many areas as well but it certainly does affect energy but I think that the way I would conclude is say you know despite the difficulties that we have right now in reaching consensus and forging it sort of at the Congress-wide level on energy one thing's really very clear and that is the outlines of our energy future they aren't really in doubt and I'll just talk about three key trends for the future that are going to play out in the future regardless of whether we actually get our act together on energy policy or not regardless of what anybody likes to believe and you know the trend number one is as I pointed out earlier developing countries are going to dominate energy consumption growth and energy infrastructure development in the future and they will be the prime market for new energy technologies they will determine the price of oil in the world we can either compete in or try to shape those strongly growing markets or we can opt out but if we don't get into those markets somebody else will the second is you know their increase in fossil fuel consumption will overmatch any increase we may have in our own domestic consumption a domestic production that's not to say our domestic production isn't important it is important but oil prices in the United States and overseas are going to become higher and more volatile that's just the fact and again we can either make strong efforts to have sort of a two-phased policy in this country where we continue to support domestic production but take strong efforts to reduce our oil intensity the amount of oil we need to produce a certain amount of GDP and if we do that we will to some extent insulate ourselves from future price volatility in oil shocks or we can fail to do that and we just are maintaining our current level of vulnerability to those shocks and then finally the third key trend is climate change climate change concerns certainly have taken a back seat during the current economic crisis despite the fact that it was 104 degrees in Washington today but the science of what's going on in the global system and the need to transition to lower carbon systems worldwide is not in doubt we may be you know there may be people who are putting their heads in the sand but at some point the rest of their body will become sufficiently warm that they will have to pull their heads out of the sand and our energy security in a very substantial way going forward is linked is dependent on climate change mitigation so again we can either plan ahead now to minimize the costs of climate change to our society going forward to our children or our grandchildren or we can just do nothing in which case they're simply saddled with higher costs and global instability all these future trends which I think are inarguable indicate that we need to have a continued thrust forward towards an efficient low carbon sustainable energy system and the technologies and the potentials that you were discussing today at the summit things like vehicle electrification energy efficiency particularly in buildings renewable energy those are all a key part of the future so I think Senator Beaman is would have one final message for all of you today is that he would like you to encourage you to keep looking for ways to engage the broader elements of our political system with the need to take action on these fronts both sides of the political aisle have people who need to have impressed on them the necessity and urgency of moving forward on a comprehensive plan to meet our future energy needs and if Senator Bingwood would leave you with any thought vicariously through me it is that we definitely need your help in making that happen so thank you very much a little time for questions so why don't we sit over there okay hi I'm Mike Petahoff from Apple just a couple questions on some I think realistic things that might be able to to help us move forward on energy policy one is there much consideration of a national renewable portfolio standards seems like this might be something that would help without having to use taxpayer dollars for grants or loan guarantees rather regulations that would influence utilities to use rate payer dollars to encourage renewable energy across the board without picking winners or losers so national renewable portfolio standards secondly the ability to have direct access for corporations to be able to buy their generation directly a program like that exists in California it is possible that were available nationwide it would be really really helpful to drive demand for renewable energy and third I guess a question is cap and trade dead or is it is it is it look like it's possible certainly in other mechanisms like reduction of knocks and socks it's been shown to reduce or have environmental benefit that makes the left happy using mark market mechanisms that make the right happy there could be some benefit there do you think there's any political reality to cap and trade okay well let me let me try to give those three succinct answers I think one with respect to a national renewable portfolio standard Senator Bingman has had proposals on that line and we've worked on them for the better part of the last decade we've gotten close a couple of times the Senate actually has passed renewable portfolio standard a couple of times the house has passed it once or twice sadly we've never done it at the same time so we're never able to actually push it across the finish line President Obama has tried has recast the the goal in terms of a clean energy standard and we've written a bill that we've introduced with a number of co-sponsors in the Senate that basically provides for a clean energy standard for electricity generation where you get your credits on a sliding scale so you get a full credit for a zero carbon source and we sort of pin the other end of the calibration curve at sort of supercritical call so if you're if you're IGCC you get a little bit of credit if you're natural gas you get about half a credit and then if you're wind or nuclear or something that's you know zero carbon you get a full credit we've done a lot of support from that across the board a lot of leading utilities have been supportive of doing that however you know we one of the iron laws of Washington is that having the president come out and visibly embrace something has a sort of there's an advantage and a disadvantage to it okay so the advantage of course is that it's great to have an administration on your side because they've got more analytical talent and smart people to help you design something complicated that you can never possibly have yourself and you have sort of you know the imprimatur of a president who's got the biggest bully pulpit in town helping you out on it however there are people who you know then find themselves in a very politically awkward position particularly in a highly politically charged environment of seeming to agree with the president of another party and and so one of the realities that we face with the clean energy standard is that even senators who have previously introduced bills along the topic you know have not felt comfortable in publicly cosponsoring or supporting that now now again you know after another election you know maybe that will abate but that's sort of where we stand on that so it's it's certainly the end of long-term signal that would be very beneficial across a it's technology neutral in a way across a wide range of technologies very desirable from that but at the moment the politics of that are tough the capuched was the third what was the second oh direct access well again I think that you're dealing with sort of market politics there obviously people who there are utilities that in some parts of the country not California but other parts of the country aren't really don't see it in their economic interest to really be for that kind of direct access and a lot of energy politics really is local politics I mean if you's you know depending on what part of the country you're from whether you're a Democrat or a Republican you have surprisingly similar views on some energy topics and so I think that's been a real struggle you know for the last couple decades and continues to be cap and trade I think that's sort of you know something that is purely marketed as a cap and trades is very unlikely to pass anytime soon the question is is can we can we come up with alternative market friendly mechanisms that effectively a price carbon in some way and again provide those kinds of signals and you know I think again that's kind of an allergic label toxic label and politics at this point but I think that there are people on both sides of the aisle quietly who are looking for ways of trying to figure out how do we address that issue because you know we know in the long term we have to let me ask you about the possibility of a revenue neutral carbon fee so you take away the problem of a fiscal drag and you have it just for the purpose of leveling the playing field I think that there are clearly lots of economists as you and you're one a lot of economists would point to that particularly at the same time that you were to repeal some sort of other regressive tax you might have there the makings of some kind of a way forward that would have that would price carbon but also would not be a drag on the economy because other regressive taxes payroll tax you know there are there are number of taxes that are very regressive in their operation you know would come off there's a lot of there are a lot of papers published places like resources for the future that sort of lay that out I think one of the difficulties that we have is that again I think one of the ways you stand up in Washington and cry fire in a crowded theater is you you stand up and yell tax right and I think that you know a lot of people head for the exits at that point even if you were even if you are trying to have tax neutral proposal there are a lot of political difficulties to that so it's certainly an idea that has a lot of substantive merit and there are a lot of people you know sort of across the board you find people the American Enterprise Institute right not known as the bastion of liberalism you know who who think that that's actually a pretty good idea and Britain papers on that and you certainly have people in very you know left leaning economic think tanks you know of the same view but I think the politics of that because it is you know you're you're in the world of the with the T word the politics of that are kind of tough in Washington well in British Columbia you they have a revenue neutral carbon tax and they're very careful about how they make a revenue neutral you get a check it's your carbon dividend what's not to like right other questions so we talk about fossil fuels one of which is petroleum for sake of discussion petroleum rock oil we're in the 21st century and we're burning rocks to move around and in this presentation and that the state of the union President Obama said we had a hundred years of natural gas based on the energy information agency that was 20 years 11 years approved 21 years of proven and possible and then most of the balance was speculative which means that we are designing a future without considering young people in the room I was wandering around here 50 years ago which now that I'm at this point doesn't seem like such a long time let's say that there's 100 years of natural your question please yeah let's say there's 100 years of natural gas what does we that what's humanity do how do we pass on the human genes to the year 101 without natural gas without oil without coal what point do we stop this madness well it's obvious that our current energy system and which is you know as I said our current energy system and its infrastructure associated with it is vast and you you're not turning that super tanker around on a dime so we are under the best of circumstances looking at a prolonged transition period away from fossil fuels to sort of low carbon fuels obviously that the advent of very low priced natural gas is having a tremendous effect on backing coal out of the utility sector we currently up to a couple years ago we were getting upwards of 50 percent of our electricity from coal that's projected to drop rather significantly simply because low priced natural gas is coming in and people are in the utility industry are also seeing other environmental regulations coming in that are going to make coal more expensive so I think that the you know there are certainly elements of what's going forward but it's clear that we do need to have sort of a long term stable policy of moving in that direction because even if you want even granted that you have to have a transition even transitions need to have some kind of policy framework and support so that all the people in the market can sort of you know act in a sort of rational way we've run out of time so please join me in thanking Bob Simon for your presentation and your thank you very much terrific